Why SSL? Purpose of using SSL Certificates in Website
Do You know? Google is giving a small rankings boost to sites using SSL.
SSL is the backbone of our secure Internet and it protects your sensitive information as it travels across the world’s computer networks. SSL is essential for protecting your website, even if it doesn’t handle sensitive information like credit cards. It provides privacy, critical security and data integrity for both your websites and your users’ personal information.
SSL Encrypts Sensitive Information
The primary reason why SSL is used is to keep sensitive information sent across the Internet encrypted so that only the intended recipient can understand it. This is important because the information you send on the Internet is passed from computer to computer to get to the destination server. Any computer in between you and the server can see your credit card numbers, usernames and passwords, and other sensitive information if it is not encrypted with an SSL certificate. When an SSL certificate is used, the information becomes unreadable to everyone except for the server you are sending the information to. This protects it from hackers and identity thieves.
SSL Provides Authentication
In addition to encryption, a proper SSL certificate also provides authentication. This means you can be sure that you are sending information to the right server and not to an imposter trying to steal your information. Why is this important? The nature of the Internet means that your customers will often be sending information through several computers. Any of these computers could pretend to be your website and trick your users into sending them personal information. It is only possible to avoid this by using a proper Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), and getting an SSL Certificate from a trusted SSL provider.
Why are SSL providers important? Trusted SSL providers will only issue an SSL certificate to a verified company that has gone through several identity checks. Certain types of SSL certificates, like EV SSL Certificates, require more validation than others. How do you know if an SSL provider is trusted? You can use our SSL Wizard to compare SSL providers that are included in most web browsers. Web browser manufactures verify that SSL providers are following specific practices and have been audited by a third-party using a standard such as WebTrust.
SSL Provides Trust
Web browsers give visual cues, such as a lock icon or a green bar, to make sure visitors know when their connection is secured. This means that they will trust your website more when they see these cues and will be more likely to buy from you. SSL providers will also give you a trust seal that instills more trust in your customers.
HTTPS also protects against phishing attacks. A phishing email is an email sent by a criminal who tries to impersonate your website. The email usually includes a link to their own website or uses a man-in-the-middle attack to use your own domain name. Because it is very difficult for these criminals to receive a proper SSL certificate, they won’t be able to perfectly impersonate your site. This means that your users will be far less likely to fall for a phishing attack because they will be looking for the trust indicators in their browser, such as a green address bar, and they won’t see it.
SSL is required for PCI Compliance
In order to accept credit card information on your website, you must pass certain audits that show that you are complying with the Payment Card Industry (PCI) standards. One of the requirements is properly using an SSL Certificate.
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- Published in Digital Marketing, Security, Technology
Localising your content: what to remember
Does expansion, new markets and an international clientele form part of your business plan? If you are thinking of expanding abroad, think also about localisation. In the digital age, translating a site is no longer enough. To reach an international audience and optimise your sites’s SEO, you need to adapt your complete offering to the local target: vocabulary, currency, taxes, time zones, or URLS… to name just a few. Let’s recap the essential elements for localising a website.
Translation vs Localisation of a website
Although translating a website is not the same as localising it, translation is a part of localisation. Is that clear? Very different from copying and pasting or using automatic translation, localising a website is about adjusting all the content in order to cater for the local target market as well as the search engines. Both on centre stage and behind the scenes, every element must seem to have been designed especially for the country in question. We talk about cultural localisation for the visible elements, such as texts, and technical localisation for the inconspicuous or hidden elements in a site’s back end.
The cultural localisation of a website
Cultural localisation is adapting the content to the culture of the country: language, laws, customs, etc.
Vocabulary
Forget automatic translation, good localisation requires quality translation. A good translator knows how to use vocabulary relevant to the target language and how to adapt it to the target audience. He or she is capable of drawing on historical or local cultural references, using typical expressions and the appropriate style or level of language. A robot cannot do this, at least not yet.
Currencies
Having to convert the prices themselves into another currency discourages most consumers. Use the currency of the target country and convert every price indicated, on the product pages, in the terms and conditions, in the delivery conditions, and even in marketing content (blog, white papers, etc.)
Products
If your products are seasonal, watch out for local specificities! Adapt your offering to the season and climatic particularities of the chosen country: a fur hat popular in Canada will have very little success in Miami.
Dates
Each country has its own calendar. Bank holidays, national holidays, or simple traditions should influence your business calendar, from promotional events to marketing operations, in order to optimise their impact.
Headers, footers, menus
They are visible, used for navigation and carefully crawled by search engine robots, so their localisation is essential. Translate them and adapt them, above all, to optimise the customer path or to prioritise the information to the needs of your target audience.
Delivery information
Vague, incomplete or missing information with regards to delivery times and prices are enough to put your online customers off. To avoid them abandoning their basket, ensure you give precise delivery times, adapted to local delivery methods and supply clear prices in the local currency.
Customer service
Proximity is reassuring! Localise your contact information with a local address and telephone number, ideally also with a local team in place. Ensure you include an email address or offer a chat facility. In all cases, set out the customer service department opening times, adapted to the country’s time zone and answer consumers in their own language.
Payment methods
Once more, a potential customer faced with unfamiliar payment methods usually has one reaction: to leave. Bank cards, online payment platforms, electronic wallets, cheques, bank transfers, payment on delivery; each country has its own practices… that a well-localised website must absolutely understand and adopt.
Returns or refund policies
This essential information may vary from one country to another, depending on local laws regulating traders and protecting consumers. Do not be content with translating your original policy – adapt it.
Taxes
Taxes also differ from one country to another, even from one state to another in the USA…
Measurements
Parcel weights, distances, screen sizes, clothing sizes or shoe sizes: each country has its peculiarities when it comes to units of measure. You must adopt them, or at least provide conversion tables. If you don’t, it will be impossible for the customer to understand; and they might have a shock to discover the delivery costs if the weight of the parcel is not specified in the usual unit of measurement for the country!
Time zones
It’s impossible to ensure a 48 hour delivery to the other side of the world, except with exorbitant delivery costs, or to announce an event at a French time for an Australian audience. Adapt each content element to the local time zone… and ensure you take account of the time difference!
Marketing content
Blog articles, white papers, infographics, tutorials, videos, emails – all are essential for natural SEO. Translate those which might interest your local target, paying particular attention to the vocabulary used and, even better, create bespoke content.
The technical localisation of a website
Too often forgotten, technical localisation consists of translating the elements that are hidden or invisible, but essential to the functioning of a website, as well as to its SEO.
URLs
For better SEO impact, choose a domain name for each country, bring together all the content relating to it, then translate every URL. So “societe.fr” is better than “company.com”.
Backlinks
Links to foreign sites will have no influence on your local SEO. Links to popular local sites will though!
Metadata
Essential for good SEO, all the ALT tags must be translated to localise a website. And no image text, title or keyword should be missed.
Search engines
Think about specifying the destination audiences in Google Webmaster Tools, to avoid the French site appearing at the top of the Japanese search results.
Error messages, popups, forms, buttons, automatic emails
When a visitor subscribes to your newsletter, sends a message or clicks in the wrong place, he or she will receive a response via an email, popup or error message. To complete a form, he or she needs to understand the fields, then to submit it, find the right button… These elements need to be translated to ensure good localisation!
Does the process seem complex? It’s worth getting right. A well-localised site is a well-indexed site, and its conversion rate is better. More visible to search engines, it is consequently more easily found and visited by your targeted consumers. Consumers who, if they find content adapted to their needs, will spread the word, improve your brand image… and therefore boost visits and SEO, creating a virtuous circle. Happy robots, happy customers, what could be better?
Courtsey:-Ludivine Chotard
- Published in Technology
Crypto Currency hits Wallstreet…HARD!!
It’s not a ‘street sign’ anymore… Well sure, you can still find them – signs on the street – but Wallstreet isn’t the same Wallstreet as it was before, and they’ve been missing the signs for a long, long time now… Crypto-currencies, blockchain, distributed ledgers, digital contracts… it’s all a new landscape and nobody on Wallstreet was ready for it.
Whois In Charge
Who is taking the lead? Who has control? It isn’t the traders on the floor or the executives in their lofty offices, nor is it the politicians or the governments. And, although this might be disputed, it isn’t even the programmers, the mathematicians, or the hackers (good, bad, or otherwise).
Slaves to the Algorithm
People fear that control is in the algorithms – the masses of servers, processors, and coin mining computers, churning away like cogs in a massive machine – one that’s poised to overrun a centuries-old system. But in reality, crypto currencies are simply replaying a history which has been with us for at least two millennia.
What is Money?
People have traded many ‘things’ as currency, for as long as anyone can recall. It hasn’t just been gold – in fact, for most of history it wasn’t gold at all. At times “currency” has been in the form of things such as sea shells, dried corn or beans, tulip bulbs, animal skins, and yes, coins of varying types of metals, and paper notes. Most of these objects of currency had intrinsic value; though often the coins and certainly the paper had none. At first, global currencies were based on the value of the commodities in use, then eventually shifted to being somewhat representative of value (though not completely tied to the value of the commodities), and eventually became completely intrinsic (having no actual value other than a governmental decree; widely known as a “fiat” currency).
Currency in the United States
For a long time, coins were a commodity currency, and therefore were backed by physical and tangible value of gold or silver. If you had a lump of gold or silver, you could take them and have them minted into fully legal tender. But the values of each respective metal fluctuated sharply with supply and demand, and at different rates. When gold outpaced silver by an increasing magnitude of value, silver was shifted to a representative currency, essentially ending the bimetallic system. Ultimately, the US shifted to a ‘gold standard’ where the dollar was tied to the value of gold (though it ceased being a true commodity currency, instead becoming a representative form).
Not All Fiats Are Cars
In the early 1970’s, the US shifted to a totally fiat currency standard, decoupling the dollar from being tied with any commodity or representative currency. This was not unprecedented – it had been done previously at least as early as in the first millennium in China – and throughout much of the 1900’s it spread until it became the global standard for currency. So, like it or not, in many ways crypto currency is nothing new at all; the same thing has been done in various ways since 1000 AD.
What Has Changed is Who Has Control
Previously, currencies have been controlled by the ruling class – kings and queens… emperors… presidents… chancellors… governments. Whether people were living in a democracy, a kingdom, or a communist regime, the governing leaders had control over the actual value of their currency. …Granted, they might not have always known that they did or have had much ability to actually do anything with the values; they were the ones who controlled it. This is what has changed with the new financial paradigm.
Do They Know?
Whether it is a crypto currency, a token, or a link on a blockchains living on a million servers, it is out of the hands of the “ruling” class, and in the hands of the people. Whether or not they know that they have the control of it, the people – for the first time in history – have control over what happens with these new fiat currencies.
Wallstreet X
This is the X-factor of the new financial world. This is what will transform Wallstreet into Wallstreet X, and will increasingly make ‘zeros’ and ‘ones’ transferrable into physical gold, tulips, or a couple of pizzas. And while there always is the possibility of change, wild fluctuations, and uncontrolled gains (and loss) – as there is with any currency – it is the people who are decreeing the value of this fiat currency. It is the people who are the now-omnipresent traders on the new Wallstreet. It is the people who are the ‘executives’ looking down from their powerful towers, peering into computer screens, watching the world change as Wallstreet X plays out in front of their eyes.
Reigns and Reins
While the people take the reins from the rulers and the rules of this world, it has not gone unnoticed. Power never changes hangs without a struggle – yes, even in America (consider the run-up to any election, if you disagree). The rulers, executives, and traders all want to regain the control they perceive they held before. They will fight back… Whether they can beat the odds on Wallstreet X remains to be seen… but the weapons they wield will be a challenge, even for the new financial paradigm. Regulations, taxes, legality…these will all be hurdles that will likely be faced, and most likely overcome.
Momentum is Stronger Than Resolve
This new financial world is rolling with a momentum that even the most shrewd, ‘connected’ bureaucrats will find challenging. The methods of the past, herding the people of their nation like a flock of passive sheep, will not take hold as it has before. Borderless, nationless currency is here, and certainly won’t go away without a massive struggle – one that no country really has the resources or the resolve to strike down. It’s too late.
Is This Good?
Well, C’mon… it’s money… “For the love of money is the root of all evil” – words that much of the world knows, even though they defiantly ignore the context. And, in the heart of most people, it’s a struggle not fought very often. When you’re talking about money, there is so much at stake – as there always is. Golden corn or crowns of gold, when it comes down to it, there is an important formula hiding deep in our daily lives. But it’s simple:
Money = Power = Strength = Control
Nobody wants to relinquish their control, strength, power, or money when it can be right there, in their hands …or the ether. And, just as time will keep ticking on (at least for now), so will fiat currencies for as long as there are taxes to pay and kids to feed. The power and control will likely shift back and forth during this struggle but in this new paradigm, there is no model where control can reman in the hands of the rulers. The genie is out of the lamp, and it can’t be put back inside. So, the real X-factor of this lifetime is whether or not the people will recognize, seize, and maintain the control they have suddenly created…
Courtesy:-Brett Gould
- Published in Crypto Currency, Networking, Technology